Monday, September 01, 2014

Route Planning with Rest Stops

Alongways is a neat and simple route-planning map, which can also help you find rest-stops along your journey.

The application uses the Google Maps API Directions Service with the Google Places API to help you find handy places to stop along a route. The application is very simple to use. Just enter your starting location, a destination and the kind of rest-stops you want and the map will display a suggested route with recommended stops for your journey.

You can enter any kind of venue for the type of rest-stops that you want displayed on your route, for example: gas stations, cafes, restaurants or hotels. Each of the recommended rest-stops are shown on the map with a marker. If you click on the marker you can view details about the stop, including the address, user ratings and a customer review.

Alongways increases the search radius for longer routes. This means that for short routes Alongways will only show you venues within a short distance of your route. For longer trips Alongways will search for venues within a slightly bigger radius from the route.

Alongways is a bit like Roadtrippers without all the bells and whistles. If you want the bells and whistles then you might prefer using Roadtrippers.

Roadtrippers also allows you to find venues along a route but it also includes many other options. For example you can define how far off your route you want to search for suggested stops. You can also save your planned trips on Roadtrippers for later reference.

Roadtrippers also includes a huge database of points of interest, so not only can you find cafes, gas stations and hotels along a planned route you can also use Roadtrippers to find interesting places to stop and visit on a journey.